Sunhold, 3rd of Reaper’s Moon, Year 1047 V.E. (Vaeltharian Era)

  The moon’s pale light draped the world in a cold, silver sheen. Shadows stretched long and thin, but true darkness did not reign—not tonight. The events unfolding beneath its quiet gaze would not pass unseen.

  A newborn’s first cry pierced the night from a shoddy hut on the outskirts of the kingdom, yet no joy followed. No cheers from the parents, no murmurs of welcome from the neighbors—only silence.

  Far from that hut, a man’s scream rang through the throne room of the royal palace, tearing through the opulent halls. But unlike the child’s wail, his agony was met with curses and fury from his killer.

  An obsidian blade cut through the air, its edge glinting with eerie light before burying itself deep into a one-handed man’s chest. He collapsed onto the blood-drenched marble, his breath ragged, his cries of anguish swallowed by the silence of the dead surrounding him. Life drained from his body, his voice fading to a whimper.

  But his killer was not yet satisfied.

  The blade rose and fell in a merciless rhythm, carving flesh from bone until what remained was nothing more than mangled ruin. Only when the fury had burned itself out did the attacker release the weapon, letting it clatter to the floor.

  The moonlight revealed the killer at last.

  It was a woman who stood over the carnage, her short black hair matted with sweat and blood. Her face, marred with scars, was devoid of expression.

  She was the youngest princess of the Agensal Kingdom—known to the people as the Benevolent Princess. But there was no benevolence in her at this moment.

  Tears mingled with the blood streaking her face, but Catherine dut Agensal felt nothing. No grief, no regret—only a hollow ache where those emotions should have been. She gazed at the lifeless body of her brother, his form twisted and broken, the warmth fading from his once-commanding presence as a powerful shardkin.

  Was it always meant to end this way?

  Slowly, she turned her gaze toward the throne. It loomed before her, bathed in the dim glow of moonlight filtering through shattered stained glass near the ceiling. Gold, encrusted with rubies, emeralds, sapphires—and Solarite, the rarest of all—which pulsed faintly with a pinkish-white glow even in the dim surrounding.

  A symbol of power, of divine right.

  But to her, it was nothing more than a gilded curse. A seat of ruin built atop the corpses of those who once swore loyalty to it.

  A throne of broken oaths and sundered alliances.

  And she had become its final sacrifice.

  She moved forward, her steps steady, heedless of her brother’s royal guards’ corpses sprawled across the chamber. Her soldiers—the Black Oath—had already withdrawn like the shadows they were, their duty fulfilled. The throne room belonged only to her now—her and the last remnant of the House of Agensal.

  Her brother had been the King’s Regent, a ruler in all but name. Bound by the laws of their bloodline, no soldier could deliver the killing blow to royalty without the will of the royal court. That burden had fallen upon her. The last of her house.

  Her fingers twitched, still slick with his blood.

  So this is what it means to rule.

  As she neared the throne, Catherine Dut Agensal’s vision blurred, not from tears, but from the weight of memories. Every step forward seemed to pull her back, forcing her to relive the road that had led her here.

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  The Horde came first.

  A tide of fur, claws, and steel crashing against the southern border. She still remembered the messengers, ragged and breathless, begging for reinforcements. Villages burned. Women and children slaughtered. Yet the capital stood still.

  Her father, ever cautious, chose to strengthen the capital’s ancient walls rather than march to war. He had thought to delay them as much as possible until reinforcements came from the neighboring two kingdoms of the northern region.

  We could have saved them, she thought grimly, the bitter taste of failure lingering in her mouth.

  But no aid came. The allied kingdoms, bound by treaties and sworn oaths, sent nothing but hollow words. She had read those letters herself, filled with empty reassurances.

  Then the siege—an endless nightmare of hunger and disease. The ancient walls held, but the city withered. The beastmen suffered, too. Their camps, sprawled over the marshy outskirts, became breeding grounds for plague. The stench of rotting bodies, human and beast alike, lingered in the air.

  And then, betrayal.

  Duke Maximilian, the Coastal Duke, the man who controlled the kingdom’s fleets, turned his banners. His defection cut off their last hope of retreat by sea. But it was her brother, Osoric, who struck the deepest wound.

  Father should have seen it coming, she thought, but perhaps she should have as well.

  Blinded by jealousy, the second prince allied with Maximilian, taking the Duke’s daughter as his wife. He saw his elder brother, the crown prince, as an obstacle. His father as a relic.

  The king, her father, was the first to die.

  Then Maric Dut Agensal, her elder brother, the rightful heir.

  The king’s body was barely cold before Osoric declared himself Regent.

  What followed was suffering.

  Wars bled the treasury dry. His reckless taxes crushed the people. Even basic grains became luxuries.

  Then the riots began. And he answered with executions.

  She still remembered the sight—whole families hanging from the city gates, their bodies left to rot as a warning.

  Catherine had watched. She had waited.

  She had been nothing to them—a princess with no claim, no power, no army. But she still had something they had lost.

  Loyalty.

  The Black Oath, the Crown’s silent protectors—unknown even to the king himself—had stood with her when no one else would. In the shadows, they guided her first moves. She reclaimed what was stolen, not with ink and whispers alone, but with blood and steel.

  Storehouses were seized. Noble strongholds fell in the dead of night. Merchants who hoarded grain, whether out of greed or fear, met the same fate. It no longer mattered.

  What mattered was that the people followed her.

  What mattered was that, in the end, she stood here—at the throne, with her brother’s lifeless body cooling at her feet.

  And that the Coastal Duke fled with half his fleet—his kin left behind to face execution by hanging for his betrayal. At least, that was the belief of the masses.

  She let out a slow breath and lowered herself onto the gilded seat. The ancient carvings of the throne dug into her back, still warm with the blood that had splattered across it.

  The golden seat, once imposing, now felt hollow beneath her, yet it still held the power above all in the kingdom.

  She would wield that power, not as a ruler basking in its glow, but as a blade carving a future from the ruin left behind.

  If blood was the price, she would pay it.

  If fire was needed, she would set the world alight.

  Mercy had no place in what was to come—only resolve.

  Whatever it took, whatever it cost, Agensal would rise anew.

  Outside, the moon faded behind the clouds, darkness swallowing the room, but the bloody princess’s eyes still glinted sharply.

  Far away, in that shoddy house, the baby’s eyes glinted as well.

  The night had given birth to two who would later shape the mortal realms—one from blood and treachery, the other from the womb—almost at the same time, as if fate itself had decreed it.

  Do all authors feel this way, or is it just me?